New York Times, Tuesday, February 23, 2016

My wife and I are obsessed with "The Great British Bake-Off," so I enjoyed this puzzle. There's something so soothing, so comforting about seeing people create pieces of art, and seeing the judges take such care to be both tactful and supportive in their constructive criticism. It's neat to see contestants flourish in that environment.

I particularly enjoyed the topmost of the LAYER / CAKES, the imagery of a CHEESEcake atop a layer of MARBLE cake = mouth-watering. And a CARROT cake layered on a SPONGE cake? I'd try that too.

A PATTY (cake) sandwiched in between a CRUMB cake and a SHEET cake, though? I can't decide which is more disturbing, the idea of a hamburger PATTY inside cake, or the inconsistency of having a sole PATTY cake which is not an actual cake like the others.

Whenever you stack two or more entries, you're bound to need a little crossword to hold things together. The bottom stack for example has CRO (prefix), ERN (suffix) and ETE (crosswordy bit of French). That's passable, but not ideal.

I've found that filling a section like this can actually be easier by expanding it. Counterintuitive, right? Turns out that a little 6x3 section has such little flexibility, that you can't really play around much. If that area had been 6x4, ETE could be BETE, FETE, PETE, etc. Then you can further play around with the EOCENE slot.

I did like Liz's work in the middle — any sort of triple-stack is tough, no matter how short the words are. Liz does very well to escape with just the awkward plural PCPS. I'd bet she tried all sorts of combinations there, even cycling in ANGEL, CREAM, FRUIT, POUND, SPICE, etc. in an effort to create clean crossings. It's just too bad that PATTY is such an outlier.

If you haven't tried GBBO, you're in for a treat. The peace and delightful calm I get from watching that show is similar to that which I get from doing Liz's generally delightful puzzles.